


Innocence

by sweetbabydean



Series: the cotton candy series [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Destructive Behaviors, Hurt/Comfort, Improper Use of Coping Mechanisms, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pseudo-Incest, Sibling Incest, death and destruction, so much fucking angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:39:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetbabydean/pseuds/sweetbabydean
Summary: A look through the youngest Winchester's loss of innocence.





	Innocence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just the prologue.
> 
> Title Credit: Janis Joplin, Piece of My Heart

Leia expects her first heart break to be something minuscule, something that she’d look back on some years down the road and wonder why the hell she even bothered to be upset. She’s sure that, that would be much easier to handle. Life’s unfair though, and she’s learned that the hard way; nothing could have prepared her for this. 

She looks at Sam like he has three heads. The words caught on her tongue feel like razor blades but she’ll let them cut her up before she says a word about it. She expected to get her heart broken by some high school aged jock who didn’t wanna play ‘just the tip’ anymore, but it turns out the first person to do the honors is her own brother; it’s a lot less superficial and a lot more emotional. Heart break comes in the form of a white envelope and an acceptance letter with nothing more than a whispered apology and puppy eyes to soothe it over. 

“Leia, I-“

“Don’t,” she croaks, eyesight blurring with the film of unshed tears. Any apology he has to give would be fake because she knows he’s not sorry for applying. “Does Dean know?”

He doesn’t have to respond because his face says it all. Sammy-boy with the expressive eyes, never able to hide anything but apparently able to hide this. Dean, too. And it’s like she gets her heart broken twice right then and there as if it’s not enough to have Sam leave her, but he and Dean had to go and lie to her too. Now she’s standing there feeling dumb because she believed they were the only two people she could depend on but now there’s this. She feels like she’s standing on an ice cap that’s drifting too far away from the mainland.

“We were gonna tell you, I promise,” Sam offers, not sure how to make it right.

She doesn’t give him any reason to believe she’s listening, just stares past him, through him, wondering how the hell things got so fucked up. When Dean walks in, he must already know what’s happening and opens his mouth to try and soothe it over. Big brother always here to fix the hurt, but she isn’t going to let him get away with it this time. Can’t soothe the pain you helped create, right?

“Leia,” Dean croons, walking closer to her.

“I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” is her final say, before she twists on her feet and heads to her room. She’s a Winchester and if there’s anything her family has taught her, it’s that life isn’t fair and all she has is herself. 

\+ + +

The week leading up to Sam’s departure, she feels numb. She spends a lot of time in her bedroom, ignoring the boys at every chance. John isn’t around to ask what’s wrong and even if he was he probably wouldn’t bother; he’s said less than a handful of words to her since she hit puberty. Of course, living in such close quarters with both Sam and Dean, she’s not able to always avoid them (though obviously not for lack of trying). When absolutely forced to interact with them she manages to give them two word responses before heading in a different direction, not wanting to give them the time of day.

She’s hurting and being near them only makes it worse. Why did no one tell her this was going to hurt so bad?

\+ + + 

Sam and John get into a fight the day of. John wasn’t meant to find out and much like Leia, he’s upset but even more so, angry. He tells Sam that if he walks out that door he better not come back, basically spits it in the boy’s face before storming out of the place. 

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride to the bus station,” Dean tells Sam, solemn look on his features that hints at his pain.

“Okay,” Sam responds but he’s looking at Leia and she knows she’s going to go with Dean to drop him off.

“You comin’, squirt?” Dean asks, throwing on John’s old leather jacket and looking like dad’s little soldier all over again.

She shrugs, trailing behind him like a puppy. If she doesn’t go, she knows she’ll probably regret it. But she also knows that this may be her very last time to convince Sam to stay, to let him know that she’s hurting too much and he can’t leave her like this. 

\+ + +

The whole ride there is quiet. No one says a word and if it wasn’t for the music in the background, they’d probably be able to hear a pin drop. She knows it’s mostly because she’s there and she’s been non verbal with them for the better part of the last week and a half since she found out. Sam and Dean’s relationship, on the surface, seems unaffected by the news, but Leia knows better than that. Dean’s gotta be hurting just as much as she is, he’s just holding it back because he’s the oldest and Winchester men have never been good with feelings. Either way, Leia kind of hates his face for it.

When they arrive, Dean hugs Sam like he’ll never see the hazel-eyed boy again and that nearly makes Leia break down in tears. She doesn’t yet, still trying to hold it together even though all she wants to do is scream at Sam for ruining everything. Dean leaves them be after, sitting in the impala and pretending not to be watching their exchange, a false sense of privacy that she appreciates.

“I’m sorry,” Sam apologizes, looking at her even though she’s not looking at him. “But you know I had to. I’m not cut out for this. Not like you, not like Dean, and definitely not like Dad. I want normal, Leia. We all deserve normal.”

She looks up at him, seeing him for what feels like the first time in ages and realizes that he’s no longer hers anymore. Not her friend, not her big brother, not the boy with the pretty eyes who helped her with homework after his soccer practice. He’s just a boy that broke her heart. 

“Stay,” she still says, broken and uneven because she’s finally shedding tears. “I’ll forgive you, if you just stay. Stay for Dean, stay for me. God dammit, Sammy. You can’t… Don’t leave me,” she pleads, feeling like a dumb high school broad begging her boyfriend not to break up with her but it’s more than that. This is her family, he and Dean. She needs them both.

She knows the words before they even come out of his mouth. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” 

She cries, dodges him when he steps in to hug her and Sam understands. Leia doesn’t watch him get on the bus because she doesn’t know if she can handle that. Instead she meets Dean half way, buries her face in his chest and sobs. Dean watches his only brother get on the bus, offering a solemn smile as his goodbye. As it pulls away, his attention returns to the sixteen year old in his arms, and his heart aches just like hers and for her because he knows how hard this is hitting her. 

“He didn’t love me enough to stay,” she whispers, fingers clutching at the lapels of Dean’s leather jacket.

Dean wishes he had something to say to soothe the hurt. All his life, Dean had thought she was soft and sweet and pure. He’d wanted to keep her that way, untouched from the reality of their life like he’d failed to with Sam. Obviously he’d failed there, too, but not for lack of trying. Dean has always done whatever he could to shelter her. His only job was to take care of them, but with Sammy gone, it was only her left. 

+++

The ride home is silent, just as it was when they came. Leia clings to her older brother for the rest of the night, endlessly crying into his chest and feeling anguished and betrayed. Leia always thought her first heart break would be a lot simpler, the cut less jagged. However, this pain is so much more than she anticipated, and Sammy-boy may as well have ripped her heart out of her chest. 

Funny how heart break can ruin girl.


End file.
